Inférence et apprentissage du vocabulaire : effet de la lexicalisation en première langue et de la tâche

Abstract

Lexical inferencing is an important strategy in reading comprehension and vocabulary learning, both in L2 and in L1. Focusing both on the effect of L1 lexicalization (i.e., the existence of lexical equivalents in learner’s L1 for a L2 word) and on that of learner’s cognitive investment, we are interested in the process of inferring an unknown L2 word encountered in reading and the subsequent learning of the inferred word. We observed 33 French-speaking learners of Chinese while they inferred 20 unknown Chinese words contained in two passages and examined the evolution of their lexical knowledge of these words. The results show that the L1 lexicalization is not a critical factor for French-speaking learners to understand an unknown Chinese word. However, it is more difficult for them to retain the meaning of a non-lexicalized Chinese word than a lexicalized one, in the short and long term. Moreover, a more important cognitive involvement may help a learner obtain a better grasp of an unknown word, but only of its form, not its meaning.

Keywords

• lexical inferencing
• lexicalization
• lexical processing
• vocabulary acquisition
• retention
• strategy